


Break Up With Him

by Nevcolleil



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Kinda Silly... Stay With Me On This, M/M, Misunderstandings, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 06:05:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: Fortified by drink, fueled by panic, there’s never gonna be a better time for Jack to confess his love for Mac...Through song.





	Break Up With Him

**Author's Note:**

> “Nah... I ain’t drunk...okay, maybe I do have a little buzz...” and “...and maybe you can lie to him and say you’ll still be friends...” strike me as such Jack things to say during a drunken phone call to someone who’s already in a relationship with someone else - but shouldn’t be :p Plus, I would just _really_ love to hear George Eads sing, and I think this song would fit his accent and vocal register :) That’s really all that lead to me writing this! 
> 
> You don’t have to have heard the song, but it may help: “Break Up With Him” by Old Dominion. (Plus, this band is reeeaally good. I say that honestly, and I don’t usually listen to country music.)

Ultimately, Jack thinks - in the moment before Mac storms up the dais, and the glare of the stagelights no longer hide his expression from Jack’s wary gaze - this was _not_ Jack’s fault.

It’s-

Okay, it’s _mostly_ Jack’s fault. 

He’s not trying to shirk his share of responsibility for making what was obviously a very bad decision. It was stupid... He’d known it was stupid. It was stupid and desperate and selfish and- 

Alcohol had a hand in this. They’ve _all_ been drinking, so no one can blame Jack for that. And the karaoke was Riley’s idea - which makes her at least forty-five percent culpable, as far as Jack’s concerned.

Plus, Mac. The drunken side of Jack insists, before the rapidly sobering portion of his brain can scold himself. If Mac hadn’t gone and fallen for a guy - a man (a man _who isn’t Jack_ )...

Well, then. This never would have happened.

 

**Here’s what happened:**

 

“Jack, _no_ ,” Riley makes one last appeal as Jack winds his way through the tables between theirs and the stage.

Too late. Jack’s committed to this. Jack’s committed to this because he has no idea what else he’s supposed to _do_ , and they’re running out of time.

“You heard Boze,” Riley almost shouts to be heard above the din of the bar. “Mac’s boyfriend is gonna be here _any minute_ -”

“Exactly,” Jack tells her simply.

Because it is. That simple, actually.

Jack has been trying to work up the nerve to tell Mac how he feels all this time... And if he hasn’t done it by the time Mac’s apparently hot, undoubtedly _disgustingly_ intelligent lover shows up so that he and Mac can be hot and intelligent together - and, like, cutesy and _in love_ in front of Jack...

Well. He’s never going to do it. He’s just not. Jack _knows_ himself. Jack will go to battle out-manned ten to one - twenty to one, even - and he’ll kick ass.

But put him in a room with Angus Macgyver and a talk about his feelings for his friend, and Jack becomes just so much spineless goo. Heart-eyed, tongue-twisted, sloppy goo. He’s hopeless. 

Fortified by drink, fueled by panic, there’s never gonna be a better time for Jack to confess his love for Mac.

Through song.

“Oh my god...” Riley finally relents, and stands - twisting her hands - by the stage, as Jack marches up and searches out just the right musical selection at the kiosk built into the left side of the dais.

“This was your idea, Riles,” he reminds her, eyes on the titles scrolling down the kiosk’s little screen.

“This was _not_ my idea,” she immediately denies. “ _My_ idea was that you ask Mac out. On a date. So you could tell him there... Preferably when you’re both sober and, you know, _thinking rationally_.”

Jack thinks music is a perfectly rational way of expressing love, anxiety, longing and regret. All the things that thinking about Mac has made Jack feel since Mac came out - and simultaneously revealed that he’d recently met Mr. Right.

Jack _simultaneously_ learned that he’d actually had a chance with Mac, all this time that he’d been convincing himself that Mac is resolutely straight - _and_ that he’d just lost his chance to someone Mac had just met. Surely there’s already a song that can convey all that, yeah?

“Ooh, that’s the one,” Jack says and ques up his choice.

“ _You_ decided to do this on group-karaoke night,” Riley is still saying. “Which was _supposed_ to be an entirely different night!”

It _was_ supposed to be an entirely different night. 

But if Jack doesn’t fix this, now, there might not be many more group-anything nights ahead of them. Things have been _so_ awkward between him and Mac since Jack, blind-sided, stormed off after Mac’s confession.

That wasn’t cool. And unable to explain himself without explaining _everything_ , Jack’s done a piss poor job of apologizing for that. It’s started to affect the time he and Mac spend together as friends - and that can _NOT_ be allowed to stand.

Even if Mac only pities Jack after Jack’s finished pouring his heart out, Jack will take that over Mac puppydog-eying him every five seconds. Looking like he thinks Jack hates him or something, which is so incredibly far from the truth that it makes Jack want to weep and/or laugh hysterically; probably both at the same time.

“ _Jack_ ,” Riley says, sharp enough that her voice and her tone pierce through the whiskey-tinted fog filling Jack’s mind. When he meets her big brown eyes they are so full of genuine concern for him, Jack could weep from that alone.

He’s kind of a weepy drunk actually, which doesn’t help.

“This. Will. Not. End. Well,” Riley breaks it down for him.

‘As long as it ends, sweetie,’ Jack’s gonna remember thinking, even after all the booze wears off.

He can’t go on living in limbo like this - wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t stormed off when Mac dropped his bomb. If he’d stayed and called bullshit. Jack’s always wondered if maybe- Thought that Mac’s being straight was the only thing stopping him from-

And according to Bozer, this guy Mac’s found bears an uncanny resemblance to-

Mac can’t _actually_ be in love with that... that interloper who’s stuck his stupid hot, smart nose into their relationship. That guy doesn’t know Mac the way Jack does. _Won’t_. Even if Mac lets him stick around for the rest of forever, and kicks Jack to the curb tomorrow. 

Jack knows it. 

And he knows Mac knows it. (He thinks.) 

And he’s gonna get Mac to admit it!

 

**This is how Jack gets Mac to admit it:**

 

Mac watches Jack make his way to the stage, Riley on his heels, with the kind of wide-eyed, dry-mouthed terror he’s used to only feeling at the very last second before a bomb doesn’t explode (but could have) or a bullet doesn’t hit where it was aimed (but probably should have.)

Mac wonders if it would be overly optimistic to hope for anything better than a near-miss at this second.

“Oh... Oh, Mac. Oh, Mac, I’m sorry,” he hears Bozer rambling from beside him, one hand clenching Mac’s arm, like he feels it too. Or something different. A sort of sympathy terror, perhaps. Is that a thing?

“It’s- it’s okay. He’s-” He’s going to ‘prove it to you in the song I sing you. No, no... I’m serious now. We’re cool, I promise. Just listen.’

Or so Jack had said before he’d pushed away from their table and made a beeline for the little stage at the center of the karaoke bar.

“He totally heard me,” Bozer moans, with so much self-recrimination that - under other circumstances - Mac would instantly try to make him feel better.

“Yes, he did, Boze,” Mac can only say now.

“ _Again_ ,” Bozer whines - he genuinely whines. “Oh. My. God, dude, _how do I keep doing this_??”

“I don’t know,” Mac admits numbly.

Under his terror, that’s sorta what Mac feels... Numb. He’s too tired to still be angry, as he had been after he’d stopped essentially mourning the freak out his coming out to Jack had caused. Too confused to wallow in self-pity. (Which, honestly, had been all his mourning phase consisted of.) 

Jack seemed so shocked when Mac spoke to him, and Mac hadn’t thought his ‘revelation’ would honestly be that much of a surprise. He had thought (hoped, perhaps) that Jack would have already guessed...

Jack seemed so... _disappointed_. So disappointed in him. It makes Mac’s throat feel thick, still, thinking about it, and it sickens his stomach.

Mac feels _that_ so sharply, it hardly matters to him anymore that Jack had only found out about Michael because Bozer burst in and blurted it out, not realizing that Jack was there - or what kind of conversation Mac and Jack were in the middle of. 

It hardly matters that Jack ran away (again) because he and Riley came back to the table with their round of the drinks and heard Bozer insisting that if Mac won’t call Michael and invite him to the bar, Bozer will. 

(‘You had your chance to fix this, Mac,’ Bozer argued. ‘You both have. Michael’s gotta get down here! Jack’ll see you two together, and maybe you can all finally move past the _weirdness_ of you wanting to bone a guy who-’)

All that matters to Mac now is what song Jack is apparently planning to sing to prove to Mac how ‘cool’ everything is. How ‘ _cool_ ’ he is with Mac; how ‘cool’ he is in general.

(Mac is so _fucking_ tired of hearing the word ‘cool’, oh my god...)

When the song starts... It’s not what Mac could have expected.

“ _Hey, boy, what’s up_?" Jack sings, to an upbeat country tune perfectly suited to his heavy southern drawl. “ _I know it’s late, but I knew you’d pick it up_..."

“ _Nah... I ain’t drunk_ ," the lyrics continue playfully, as Mac tries to interpret what Jack could possibly be trying to say, just from this little bit of the song’s beginning. “ _Okay, maybe I do have a little buzz...But that song came on and I just thought... what harm could come from one little call_?”

Bozer picks up on what’s happening the second before Mac does, obviously. His jaw drops before Mac’s heart flips a complete 360 degrees in his chest.

“Mac... Is he-”

“ _I know you say you’re taken but I say, boy, you’re takin’ too long..._ ” Jack sings, and Bozer just about comes out of his seat next to Mac, his hand on Mac’s arm squeezing like _he’s_ pinching _Mac_ to test whether or not he’s dreaming.

The tempo picks up, and so does Jack’s voice - and as Mac watches, Jack’s eyes lift and shift directly towards Mac. 

“ _To tell ‘im that it’s over..._ " Jack locks gazes with Mac and sings loudly, “ _...and bring it on over... Stringin’ him along any longer, boy, is just wastin’ precious time..._ "

Just like that, Mac’s world has flipped just about as neatly as his heart.

Next to him, Bozer is _losing his mind_... and most of the rest of the audience in the bar is either genuinely enjoying Jack’s performance more than the average karaoke participant’s - or catching on that something more is happening here - or both. People are starting to sing along, to clap or to cheer Jack on, but Mac can only stare and swallow and try to manage his racing pulse, especially as Jack’s voice rises and crests before dipping low with the chorus.

“ _Boy, you know it can’t wait... rip it off just like a bandaid_ ," he croons. “ _The way you look at me, boy, you can’t pretend. I know you ain’t in love with him, break up with him..._ ”

Forget it. Mac’s pulse can’t be managed. He may legitimately faint. He’s not even much of a country song fan, but Mac swears his heart syncs with the strum of guitar strings in this one.

“ _I know you don’t wanna break his heart... but that ain’t no good reason to be keepin’ us apart_ ," the song goes on, as Jack moves to it, “ _Look, just tell him it’s you, it ain’t him... and maybe you can lie to him and say you’ll still be friends..._ " 

“ _Whatever you got to say to get through to him that you ain’t in love..._ " Jack sings resolutely, with a sincerity that Mac wants so much to be real that it _hurts_. “ _Come on, you can’t deny that you and I kinda fit like a glove..._ ”

Because they _do_ , don’t they? He and Jack- They _fit_. They’ve _always_ fit... Better than Mac’s ever fit with anyone. 

And here’s Jack singing, “ _So tell him that it’s over..._ " with a stubborn surety that is so classic Jack - opening his arms on “ _...and bring it on over..._ ” like it’s a dare.

Seeing the cocky swagger of Jack’s movements in the context of what the song is saying to Mac... 

It makes Mac’s heart flip right back into it’s natural place, and then straight up into his throat.

Jack hasn’t looked away from Mac once through the whole song. Can he see what he’s doing to Mac with this, from all the way across a crowded room of strangers? 

“Yeah... I’m pretty sure Jack’s problem with you coming out isn’t that he’s feaked ‘cause Michael looks just like him,” Bozer says sort of unnecessarily.

“ _It ain’t my business to be all up in..._ ,” Jack lies into his mic as Mac just shakes his head... Yeah. Mac’s picked up on that. Finally. 

It almost sounds like pleading as Jack sings, “ _But I know you ain’t in love with him, break up with him... I know that you’re so done with him, break up with him, break up with him_ -”

The question is, what is Mac going to do about it? Jack didn’t have to do... _this_ to make up for the misunderstanding that’s had Mac walking on eggshells around Jack for weeks. 

Or did he? If Jack’s felt just as unable to tell Mac how he really feels as Mac’s felt about telling Jack how much it hurts, thinking that everything they’ve built together as friends and partners was actually so fragile - so shallow - that just the thought that he could be attracted to Jack could tear it down...

Should Mac do something equally brave to clarify how _he_ really feels?

Or is that adrenaline and too many beers talking?

“ _You woulda hung up by now if you weren’t thinkin’ it too,_ " Jack seems to answer from the stage, “ _No pressure, whatever, just do what you gotta do... But if I was you-_ ”

Mac must not have looked away from Jack this whole time either, because he never saw Riley start back across the bar from where she’s been standing by the stage since following Jack to the stage.

And then Mac stands up and suddenly Riley is stepping in front of him.

“Mac, don’t leave.”

“Riley-”

“Look, I know Jack’s got _terrible_ timing, okay?” Riley starts, before Mac can even begin to explain that he’s not going anywhere _away_ from Jack. “And he’s had... like, a lot to drink. But he’s serious, okay? He’s been really messed up over you and Michael... And he has _not_ handled it the right way, but if you just _leave_ -”

If Mac left right now, Jack would assume what Mac assumed when Jack left him. Especially since Jack believes that Mac would be leaving him to go to someone else.

Jesus, this is such a mess.

“ _Riley_ , I’m not leaving, okay?” Mac promises her. 

She is _never_ going to let him live it down once he’s told her everything. Mac knows he’s going to have to make it up to her. 

But it’s _past_ time he clear up his side of this whole, dumb misunderstanding. 

 

**This is Mac’s side of the whole, dumb misunderstanding:**

 

“Mac, _no_ ,” Bozer argues, when Mac says again that he’ll clear up this entire, ridiculous thing that’s grown so out of proportion between him and Jack. After the karaoke bar tonight. “No, this has gone on too long already. Tell him now! Call him up and-”

“If I tell him now,” Mac argues back, “he might not even come out tonight. Bozer, things have _just_ gone back to something like normal for us. I don’t want Jack to start avoiding me again.”

Avoiding him as much as he could, when the two of them work with one another pretty much 24/7.

And Mac doesn’t need the look that Bozer gives him to know how he sounds. Mac knows how he _is_. Pathetic. Clingy... 

But his worst nightmare had been that he’d tell Jack how he feels, and not only would Jack not return his feelings, but Mac would lose what he has with Jack already as well. That’s why he’d rejected Bozer’s many suggestions over the years to just come clean with Jack and get everything out in the open.

He’d worked up the nerve the day he finally tried because he’d gotten it into his head- 

And look how that had turned out. Mac’s worst nightmare came true.

At least things have gotten slightly better since Mac’s allowed Jack to believe that he’s actually dating Michael, the new friend who actually inspired Mac to tell Jack how he feels. Jack’s actually started dropping by Mac’s house again, almost as often as he used to. There aren’t long stretches of awkward silence between them whenever someone so much as mentions dating or sex...

“Things are _not_ normal for you two,” Bozer says. “And I know that that’s my fault.”

To be fair, alcohol had had a hand in the mix-up as well. Mac and Bozer had been out drinking... Mac had run into Michael, and Bozer had picked up on the interest that Michael’s expressed to Mac before.

Mac had gone home early, and when Jack had stopped by, Mac had made the spontaneous decision to hash things out with the _reason_ he couldn’t return Michael’s interest. Or anyone’s, for that matter, now that Mac’s fully realized and accepted the depth of the feelings he’s been fighting for Jack for almost as long as they’ve known one another.

Bozer was maybe... forty-five percent to blame for coming home later, buzzed, not knowing that Jack was there or what Mac had just admitted, and teasing Mac about having a “boyfriend” who looks like his partner.

“But if I knew Jack was there, I would never have run my mouth, man,” Bozer says, for probably the dozenth time. 

Mac knows he’s meant it, each and every one. “I know, Boze.”

“And if I’d known how you feel about Jack, I wouldn’t have done it even if Jack hadn’t been there!”

He really wouldn’t have, Mac knows. He hadn’t _not_ told Bozer because he hadn’t thought Bozer would support him or would give him grief about it or something.

Mac had just been that much in denial at first - and then that afraid of what the truth could mean if he let it out, even to his oldest friend in the world.

“Now that I do know,” Bozer says, “let me do something to fix what I’ve messed up, Mac. Trust me when I say you’ve gotta just tell him that you and Michael are just friends and work through this some other way.”

Mac had never intended to do anything else... But after Jack had freaked out at the thought that Mac has been sleeping with a guy who looks just like him, Mac hadn’t seen a way to explain that he hasn’t been (because he’s too caught up on wishing he were sleeping with Jack instead) without freaking Jack out all over again.

“Ever since you failed to correct Jack when he took my joke about Michael being your boyfriend and ran with it,” Bozer says, “you’ve got us lying to Matty... to _Riley_... And the second anybody actually sees you and Michael together, they’re gonna guess what he and Jack’s got in common. And what they don’t. Which is, namely, that you’re _crazy_ about just one of them... And it’s not the one everybody thinks is your boyfriend!”

Mac and Bozer argue about this all the way to the karaoke bar - and consistently throughout the night, whenever Jack and Riley aren’t sure to hear them.

 

 **Which brings us back to...**

 

“ _Yeah, I know I said it, but I’ll say it again..._ ,” Jack kept moving with the music, singing until Mac reached the stage - stumbling just once as he watched Mac say something to Riley, moments before, then walk right past her. At least Mac didn’t head for the door. That’s about what Jack would deserve. “ _I know you’re not in love with him-_ ”

Then Mac takes that one step closer, up the steps of the dais, so that Jack can see the look on his face - 

The music keeps playing, but Jack’s voice just abruptly fails him.

He’s not so drunk that he’s seeing things, is he?

He doesn’t even feel drunk anymore - the adrenaline pumping through his blood is much headier than alcohol.

But assuming that Jack _is_ imagining that the urgency he sees on Mac’s face looks _happy_... relieved, even- Jack lowers his mic and tries to squeeze in the most important things he needs to say to Mac - that he would have said once the song was over, if he’d gotten the chance - while he still can.

“I never meant to hurt you, man,” Jack says as Mac clears the stairs. “Never. I just love you so much. I couldn’t stand thinking I missed my chance before I even tried to take it-”

Mac cuts him off.

By pressing his mouth to Jack’s in a hard, hot kiss.

As fallouts go, Jack’s gonna take this one. He’s never made a decision - stupid and desperate and selfish or otherwise - turn out better.

He grabs Mac by the face and kisses him back. And their audience goes nuts.

But Jack couldn’t care less about that.

“What about your boyfriend?” Jack asks, when he and Mac come up for air - having half-stumbled off the stage, still locked at the mouth, to make room for the bar’s next act.

He even manages not to sound too smug when he does.

Probably.

“Yeah... about that. I don’t actually have... a boyfriend,” Mac says in little stops and starts, watching Jack’s face closely, like he’s wary about what Jack might think about that. And like there’s a story he’s got to tell.

They’ll get to that, Jack knows. But as for what he thinks, whatever Mac’s story is-

Jack knows one thing, and he doesn’t need a song to say it.

“The hell you _don’t_ ,” Jack says. “I get that you might need some, you know... post-breakup me-time, but as soon as that’s done, I am officially declaring-”

Mac cuts him off again. Same way.

Oh, who is Jack kidding.

He is _totally_ smug.

 

**And he remains that way - well after learning the truth. Especially around Michael, when the two finally meet.**

**“You _do_ remember how I told you that he and I never actually dated, right?” Mac has to ask - equal parts perplexed, bashful, and fond - after Jack spends the night acting _incredibly_ obvious about the nature of his and Mac’s relationship.**

**“Mm-hmm. Don’t hurt to give _him_ a little reminder, whenever he smiles at you that way.”**

**“Right. And what way is that again?”**

**“The way that says he’d like to be the one who gets to do _this_ with you on a regular basis,” Jack informs his lover, and when Mac just rolls his eyes and says “What do you-” Jack shows him.**

**It’s a good thing they've already made it back to the car. Nobody sees where Jack's hand goes for his demonstration - or his mouth.**


End file.
